Four Risks to Avoid When Your Company is Digitizing Digitization has become one of the most important trends facing all managers, but it will take close collaboration across IT and the rest of the firm to realize the benefits.

Public cloud adoption challenges in-house IT teams and requires a shift in thinking.

According to Shweta Jhajharia of The London Coaching Group, in order to create powerful systems that optimise your output, it is important to have a foundational knowledge of the three basic layers of systems.

With the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), these “things” are evolving through several stages, eventually gaining autonomous purchasing capabilities and being recognized as entities with their own rights and responsibilities. Today, things are providing information and making recommendations to their owners — “service me soon,” “buy a replacement part,” “you might also want to consider buying this.” Gartner coins this development “things as announcers.” .

This convention is about leadership for excellence and innovation, and this plenary session is about driving them through the boardroom. As directors we need to consider questions such as excellence and innovation in what? - and, perhaps more importantly, excellence and innovation for whom? Someone has to pay for our companies to be excellent and innovative.

After years of planning and preparation, the Senior Managers Regime (SMR) has finally gone live in the banking and insurance industries and will soon be rolled out to the wider financial services sector. The SMR seeks to boost personal accountability by putting the onus on you as an individual to demonstrate that you’re taking reasonable steps to do the right thing.

According to Ian Hawkins, professional speaker and member of Toastmasters International there are three things you need to get straight before you go on stage.

Regardless of size, biopharmaceutical companies need to ensure that the products they are developing are safe.

Cognizant discusses how the automation of infrastructure management must be tightly aligned and integrated with strategic objectives to ensure business relevance and deliver better customer experiences.

The CTO of Deloitte Consulting shares some advice for CIOs undertaking a digital transition: It will challenge IT to grow beyond business as usual.

‘The Authority Guides’ is a new series of pocket-sized books offering highly practical and accessible guidance on a wide variety of business matters.

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It is about how to realise one’s full potential through self-empowerment, co-creation and alignment with one’s Higher Self. We are all familiar with the likes of Sir Richard Branson and Lord Sugar, but for every entrepreneur who has made a million, there are thousands who struggle for years and only partially succeed.

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The world of business is moving from that of jobs, of tasks performed for money, to the world where what we do, and how we do it, is valued by the contribution made and the manner of its making – says William Buist, founder of xTEN Club.

Most staff dread attending workshops.

This paper draws on a comprehensive review of the recent project management literature to discuss the main developments and drivers of change in project management, as well as the challenges facing the profession and the progress being to adapt to the new demands on project management.

Lyn Roseaman from Toastmasters International believes your conclusion should signal the end; it is not just a final sentence.

As a business leader, you’re in a position of high visibility and you set the tone for the rest of the organisation.

The campaigns for equality have not stopped since the first suffragist demonstrators demanded voting rights.

Shaw argues it is not the actual redundancy that is the problem, but a stripping of dignity and the destruction of self-esteem during the delivery of redundancy news that has developed in recent years.

Do you get that sinking feeling when someone (your MD? HR? A keen colleague?) suggests you ‘do some team building’? Do you have ghastly visions of yourself kneeling on the floor with a bongo between your knees, playing the drums in a conference room? Or building Lego constructions against the clock in competition with another department? Unfortunately it seems many people have come to equate ‘team building’ with ‘doing creative or sporty activities with other members of the team.

One hundred years ago, in early 1916, Ernest Shackleton’s plans lay in tatters.

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10,000 hours of deliberate practice is required to become an expert in any particular field – this was the notion highlighted in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, where he cites the 1993 paper by K.

Which skills are most critical to success as a business leader? Nuanced leadership skills; strategic foresight; operational savvy; and team/relationship building are four of the most critical skills, according to a 2015 Harvard Business Review (HBR) of executive search consultants.

How much of a buzz is there in your building? Do you know where your organisation is heading and how your leadership will take it there? Do people working in your organisation always do what you want them to do? Is your team consistently enthusiastic, engaged and motivated to do its best? The new business book, ‘A Buzz in the Building’ by Kate Mercer will change the way you think about your business. The wisdom and stories gleaned from Kate Mercer’s lifetime of working with business leaders make this book an engaging and inspirational read. Kate takes you through the mindsets and skills that are required to create an organisation that functions as smoothly and organically as a beehive. When you’ve read ‘A Buzz in the Building’ you will know how to: Create great teams of people who know where your organisation is going and are enthusiastic about playing their part in getting there Communicate so that people do what you want them to do – willingly and without having to be chased all the time Build a brilliant organisation that is as successful as the business it supports, that clients want to work with, and new employees want to join and stay part of About the author Kate Mercer is co-founder of Leaders Lab and works with businesses of all sizes to create healthy organisations in which people develop the skills and resources they need to do a great job.

“Fear can be helpful because it alerts us to danger, whether justified or not, however fear can also wreak havoc on a business by choking creativity and ambition.

While this looks like it would bankrupt companies to make these gender biased odds more even, the simple math is that it would actually cause companies to perform better.

In the first paper I concluded that: 1.

Remote working The average UK worker spends 55 minutes a day commuting – that’s over 20 hours a month.

As it turned out, the planes didn’t fall out of the sky and the economies didn’t collapse.

The first day I drove to an airport and found they’d introduced a fee to drop off a passenger I was angry. Anyone who owns a Volkswagen might well be angry in the light of the emission scandal. These feelings are the same.

Sometimes things seem to conspire against you and you lose the plot; stress hormones get released, your heart starts pounding and your sense of humour makes a swift exit ‘stage left’.

In all the companies for which I’ve been fortunate enough to work, there are traditions and rules around promotion scheduling.

In the quest for ever greater efficiencies, productivity and general cost saving, there are, according to Sarah Lewis M.Sc.

Consulting firms sell expertise, and their currency is trust.

What progress has been made? What should the priorities be for 2016 and subsequent years? Has CSR been a catalyst in the creation of more socially aware and responsible businesses? Are CSR initiatives themselves becoming more imaginative and having greater impact? Have legislative, regulatory and other external developments resulted in more responsible business conduct? In India, it may be an appropriate time to take stock of the impact of CSR requirements in the Companies Act 2013.

More than ever in our rapidly changing workplace, managers need to understand employee motivation and act on it before loyalty is lost, according to cognitive neuroscientist and business psychologist Dr Lynda Shaw. Gallup estimates that actively disengaged employees cost the U.S.

Most business owners hear the word marketing and believe it’s all about lead generation; pulling in new enquiries and gaining new customers.

Barrier 1: An institutional culture which put more weight on positive information about the service than on information suggesting there is cause for concern One of the biggest issues that I have seen over the years is an organisational culture which puts more value on ‘good news’ about the organisation than on information about ‘causes for concern’.

The results of Richard Wiseman's experiment are widely known; 88% of those who set New Year's resolutions fail to achieve them.

As the largest single gathering of a business’ workforce, key influencers, partners, customers and community, annual conferences are vital for building a loyal and cohesive team, helping solidify strong partnerships and revealing the future plan for the business.

How strong is your network? What return do you get for your networking effort? Successful networking is about your ability to forge mutually beneficial, integrated alliances with the right partners.

One of the most significant consequences of a leader being under too much pressure is that they lose their ability to see what is really happening in their business and may compound this issue with self-denial that they are in any way at fault.

Christmas is coming! Although it’s a time for celebration – work still exists and jobs still need to be done. Sue Ingram, from Converse Well, believes that as a manager there are some crucial communications that need to be made around expectations over the Christmas period.

It can be very frustrating when people don’t use their initiative at work to solve problems or to be creative.

Writing and delivering a speech in front of people is more than just speaking; it helps you to develop and perfect five core skills essential to boosting your career, business and life.

Reverse mentoring flips the traditional mentor-protégé model on its head as younger professionals “mentor” their older colleagues.